Unlike the United States of America, France does not refer to its citizens based on their race, religion or origin. For us, there is no hyphenated identity, the roots are an individual reality. By calling them an African team, it seems that you are denying their Frenchness.

Noah, who is from South Africa, took Wednesday’s episode of The Daily Show to issue a powerful response to the French ambassador.

When I say they're African, I’m not saying it as a way to exclude them from their Frenchness. I’m saying it to include them in my Africanness. https://t.co/8RW4Rvt7m6

“My opinion is — coming from South Africa, coming from Africa, and even watching the World Cup in the United States of America — black people all over the world were celebrating the African-ness of the French players. Not in a negative way but rather in a positive way. ‘Look at these Africans who can become French.’ It’s a celebration of that achievement. And so this is what I find weird in these arguments is that people go, ‘They’re not African! They’re French.’ And I’m like, ‘Why can’t they be both?’

“Why is that duality only afforded to a select group of people? Why cannot they be African? What they’re arguing here is in order to be French, you have to erase everything that is African? Because what do they mean when they say that — our culture, our this, our this. So you cannot be French and African at the same time, which I vehemently disagree with.”

Trevor Noah responds to French ambassador's criticism over his African World Cup joke

“It’s a celebration of that achievement.”

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